A Comprehensive Guide to the Cambridge College Essay Competitions

Cambridge College Essay Competitions

Thinking of applying to Oxbridge but need new ways to get ahead of the game with your application? What plenty of students aren’t aware of is the fact that many of the Cambridge colleges hold essay prizes for students in year 12 focusing on various subjects, allowing prospective applicants to get a taste of what uni-level essay writing might be like, as well as giving you something great to put on your CV. Below is a comprehensive list of the essay competitions help by the various Cambridge colleges, listed by subject. If any of them take your fancy, be sure to head over to the college website to get more details about how to enter and when the deadlines are! We’ve also included past and present questions to give you a bit of an idea about what each competition is likely to entail.

Multi-Disciplinary/Humanities

Robinson College Essay Prize

The Robinson College Essay Prize is open to all students in Year 12 (Lower Sixth, or equivalent) at a UK School during the 2020-21 academic year. It is designed to give students the opportunity to develop and showcase their independent study and writing skills. Entrants are invited to submit a response to any one of the questions given, which should be no longer than 2,000 words (including footnotes and captions). The questions may be discussed with reference to any academic discipline or area of interest. Up to three entries may be submitted per school, so please discuss your application with your school prior to entry.

2021 Questions:

1. "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury." (JS Mill). Do you agree?
2. 'Creativity should be the highest goal of education.' Discuss.
3. "In policy making, there is no such thing as 'the data', and therefore no such thing as 'acting on the data'." Do you agree?
4. "The translated text must add up to the original... [translation] is like a problem in math—using different numbers, the answer must be the same, different numbers must add up to the same answer." (Lydia Davis). Discuss.
5. Watch this video featuring the poet Kamau Braithwaite and discuss the significance of 'archives of freedom'.

Girton College Humanities Writing Competition
This annual competition is an opportunity for year 12 students to research and write beyond the curriculum, using one or more of the Lawrence Room museum objects, as their focus. Essays or creative responses (such as dramatic monologues or short stories) are equally welcome. The judges are looking for the ability to connect different areas of knowledge, to think about details and to communicate clearly.

Archaeology

Fitzwilliam College Archaeology Essay Competition
This essay competition is for students in year 21 or equivalent; limit of 2500 words.

2022 questions:

1. What can responses to climate in the past teach us today?
2. In what ways does the study of archaeology remain political?
3. How is construction and building in the past symptomatic of imminent social collapse?

Architecture

Fitzwilliam College Architecture Design Competition
2022 brief:

You are challenged to design a new building somewhere on the Fitzwilliam College site. This building will serve as a hub for interaction between teaching staff and students, where they can share and explore ideas.

During the design process, you will need to think about what programmes or activities need to be accommodated in the new building. For instance, you can consider including spaces for social interaction such as a new cafe, as well as spaces to have quieter conversations in groups of different sizes. You must also consider possible locations for the new building within the College site, taking into consideration the other College buildings in your design, as well as the landscaped areas preserving mature trees as much as possible. This should be seen as an opportunity to create an interesting relationship between the interior and exterior spaces.

You are required to submit:

- Project Title that best describes your design intention and final design solution
- Design Narrative of 500 words that concisely explains your design inspiration, design objective, and final design strategy developed to meet your design objective
- Drawings that show the following:

1) floor plan(s) of your building at 1:200 scale
2) one elevation and one section of the building that best describes main features of the design solution
3) one site plan that indicates the location of the building in relation to existing buildings in the college site. A detailed site plan showing the ground floor plans of the individual buildings is available on the essay competition website for reference, but you should produce a new drawing for the competition submission.
4) one perspective drawing of your building that highlights your design intention and shows the placement of a new building in relation to existing college buildings nearby.

Classics

Fitzwilliam College Ancient World and Classics Essay Competition
This essay competition is for students in year 21 or equivalent; limit of 2500 words.

2022 questions:

1. Do ancient audiences / readers / listeners matter to our interpretations of ancient texts? Discuss with reference to any text or texts of your choice.
2. Why do we need new translations of ancient texts? Discuss with reference to any text or texts of your choice.
3. “The ancient world was more concerned with controlling nature than conserving it.” Discuss with reference to any area or period of your choice.
4. When does childhood end in the ancient world? Discuss with reference to any area or period of your choice.
5. Why does Aristotle say that people are ‘political animals’? Was he right?
6. How important was trade with the Near East and / or Egypt in any period of your choice?

English

Trinity College Gould Prize for Essays in English Literature
Trinity College launched the Gould Prize for Essays in English Literature in 2013. This is an annual competition for Year 12 or Lower 6th students. The Prize has been established from a bequest made by Dr Dennis Gould in 2004 for the furtherance of education in English Literature. Candidates are invited each year to submit an essay of between 1,500 and 2,500 words on a topic to be chosen from the list of questions.

Newnham College The Woolf Essay Prize
n 1928, Virginia Woolf addressed the Newnham Arts Society on the Subject of ‘Women and Fiction’, and from this talk emerged her seminal text, A Room of One’s Own. A Room of One’s Own raises a number of questions surrounding the place of women in society and culture, and the competition allows students to contemplate these themes and ideas while developing the independent research and writing skills essential to university-level study.

2021-22 Questions:
1. ‘Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.’ How have female writers been inspired by limitations placed on their educational experiences? You may discuss historical or modern-day examples.
2. ‘A woman might write letters while she was sitting by her father’s sick-bed. She might write them by the fire whilst the men talked without disturbing them’. How might letters add to our understanding of female writers and their work? You may discuss the letters of any female author, poet or playwright.
3. ‘Anonymity runs in their blood. […] they are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names into it’. Should the women of the past be commemorated in a different manner to their male counterparts? Explain.

Queen’s College The Estelle Prize for English
Queens' College invites submissions for the English Prize 2021, which will be awarded to the best essay submitted by a Year 12 (Lower Sixth Form) student. Essays must be less that 2500 words.

History

Fitzwilliam College History Essay Competition
This essay competition is for students in year 21 or equivalent; limit of 2500 words.

2022 brief:
Fitzwilliam College traces its origins to 1869, when the University of Cambridge launched an initiative to facilitate access to Higher Education for the many students who could not afford the costs of college membership. The initiative was part of the broader transformation of education in Britain, as the changes wrought by industrialisation and urbanisation created a need to cater for a growing, increasingly diverse and literate population. Earlier decades had already witnessed the establishment of King’s College London, Durham University, and the University of London, for instance, and colleges for women were beginning to open in Cambridge and Oxford. These radical social and economic changes were themselves connected to the intensification of globalisation in the second half of the nineteenth century, which placed Britain at the heart of an ever-tighter web of economic relations between the world’s continents.

But the same year also witnessed the birth of Mohandas – later Mahatma – Gandhi, who would come to challenge Britain’s colonial rule and lead India on the path to independence; the death of Alphonse de Lamartine, the poet and politician who had proudly proclaimed France’s Second Republic in 1848, but whose final years were lived under the more authoritarian Second Empire; the marriage of Emperor Meiji, which consolidated Japan’s monarchy as the country began a new process of industrialisation; and the establishment by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the National Woman Suffrage Association in a United States still recovering from the Civil War.
In 1869, as throughout history, old and new worlds collided. We invite applicants to examine, in their essays, a topic of their choice, connected to the changes taking place in or around the year 1869. Essays may focus on a particular event, a person, a political movement, or even a process of social, economic or cultural change, but they should consider the interaction of ‘old’ and ‘new’ forces which the chosen topic illuminates.

Fitzwilliam College Rosemary Horrox Medieval World Essay Competition
This essay competition is for students in year 21 or equivalent; limit of 2500 words.

2022 Questions:
1. How can the study of dead languages help us understand medieval cultures?
2. What qualities made heroes heroic and villains villainous in medieval literature?
3. How far do medieval texts give us any cause for optimism in their presentation of gender?
4. Did the European Middle Ages witness the “Invention of Race”?
5. Were war and/or rebellion the defining features of medieval society?
6. “Medieval Europe cannot be studied in isolation from the rest of the world”. Do you agree?

Trinity College Robson History Prize
The Robson History Prize is an annual competition for Year 12 or Lower 6th students. The Prize was established in 2007 in memory of the historian Robert Robson, who was for many years a Fellow and Tutor at Trinity. The aims of the Robson Prize are twofold: firstly, to encourage ambitious and talented Year 12 or Lower Sixth students considering applying to university to read History or a related discipline; and secondly, to recognize the achievements both of high-calibre students and of those who teach them.

2022 questions:

The Robson history prize for 2022 had 94 questions in the categories of British History, European History, World History, and Historiography, so head to the website for the full list.

Newnham college History Essay Prize
The Newnham History Essay Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at UK state school. Essays should be between 1500 and 2500 words.

2021-22 Questions:
1. ‘Historians shouldn’t be political pundits’. Discuss
2. Can the history of clothing tell us about anything other than changes in fashion?
3. Is historical change driven by great individuals?

Land Economy

Fitzwilliam College Land Economy Essay Competition
This essay competition is for students in year 21 or equivalent; limit of 2500 words.

2022 Questions:
1. Do you believe that environmentalist civil society organisations, such as Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace, can be effective at pushing governments to adopt environmental policies aimed at addressing the climate and ecological crises?
2. ‘Territorial inequality between different parts of the UK is extremely high. This undermines the principle of equality of opportunities, because individuals’ life chances crucially depend on where one happens to be born and raised.’ Discuss, possibly drawing on examples from your own area of residence.
3. Some argue that the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted the fate of inner cities and, in the future, expensive, commuter-driven urban cores will decline in favour of less compact/dense areas such as towns and the countryside. Do you agree?

Law

Trinity College Robert Walker Prize for Essays in Law

The prize is named after an Honorary Fellow of the College, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court and former law student at Trinity. Essays can be of any length up to 2,000 words (including footnotes).

2022 question:
‘What responsibilities in connection with the environment and sustainability, if any, should the law assign to owners and to occupiers of land?’

Linguistics

Trinity College Linguistics Essay Prize
This annual Essay Competition aims to raise awareness of the systematic study of language as an interesting and multifaceted subject in and of itself. The competition is open to all students with an interest in how language works regardless of the specific subjects they are currently studying at A-Level (or similar qualification). For example, it may be of interest to students taking A-Levels in Modern Languages, English Language or Classics, but also to students taking Psychology or Mathematics.

2022 topic:
‘People who speak two or more languages or dialects sometimes switch between them within the same conversation, and even within the same sentence. What reasons make people switch languages (or dialects)? Why is this interesting for linguists? Should linguists prescribe if switching is good or bad?’

Philosophy

Trinity College Philosophy Essay Prize
The Philosophy Essay Prize is open to Year 12 or Lower 6th students. The aim of the Prize is to encourage able sixth formers to pursue their interest in Philosophy, with the hope that they will be encouraged to read this or related subjects at University.

2022 Questions:
- Which philosophical insight that you have come across in your life so far has been the most important one for you?
- What is the difference between knowledge and understanding?
- Is truth a human invention?

Newnham College Philosophy Essay Prize
The Newnham Philosophy Essay Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a UK state school. It is designed to give students the opportunity to think and write about philosophy and philosophical matters in the broadest sense, while developing their independent study and writing skills. Through exposure to the type of work they might be expected to do at Cambridge, Newnham hope to encourage philosophy applicants to the University – and hopefully to Newnham, where women’s history and educational excellence are, of course, central.

2021-22 Question:
‘Sentences such as “A good oak tree has deep roots” can be true, and true irrespective of anybody’s opinion. In other words, such sentences can be objectively true. Now, the word “good” doesn’t change its meaning just because it’s being applied to members of one species rather than another. So, sentences such as “A good human being is kind” can be objectively true as well.’ Should we be convinced by this kind of argument for the objectivity of ethical judgements?

Politics

Trinity College R.A. Butler Politics Prize
The objectives of the R.A. Butler Prize are twofold. Firstly, it aims to encourage students with an interest in modern politics and world affairs to think about undertaking university studies in Politics, International Studies or a related discipline; it is not limited to those already studying these subjects or indeed other social sciences. Secondly, its intention is to recognise the achievements both of high-calibre students and of those who teach them. Essays can be up to 3,000 words, including all footnotes and references but excluding the bibliography.

2022 Questions:
- Whom do elected representatives, in practice, represent?
- Are the police institutionally discriminatory?
-  Is it ever legitimate for one country to invade another?
- Should countries be punished for the actions of their leaders?
- Do international regional organisations offer the best prospects for cooperation between states in the contemporary world?
- Are international organisations biased towards the interests of wealthy countries?
- What should the UK be doing to help refugees?
- Should every family own its own home?
- What statues should come down, and which (if any) should stay up?
- What policies should the UK government be implementing to ensure it meets its commitments made at the UN Climate Change Conferences?

Maths

Newnham College Philippa Fawcett Mathematics Essay Prize
The Philippa Fawcett Mathematics Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a UK state school. The prize may be of particular interest to those studying Mathematics, Statistics or Further Mathematics but we welcome entries from interested students studying any combination of subjects.

Entrants are invited to submit a response to any one of the questions below. Submissions should comply with the following:

• 4-6 A4 sides maximum including all figures, diagrams, tables and bibliography
• 12 point font minimum
• 2 cm margins minimum
• 2500 words max.

2021-22 Questions:
1. How does mathematics protect your privacy online?
2. What are the most fascinating aspects behind the mathematics of music? Discuss how mathematics is related to the theory of musical structures and/or instruments.
3. Mathematics and climate change: What role do you think mathematics can play in guiding policy makers and in helping public understanding?

Medicine

Newnham College Medicine Prize
The Newnham College Medicine Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a maintained sector UK school. The prize may be of particular interest to those studying Biology and Chemistry, but we welcome entries from interested students studying any
combination of subjects.

Entrants are invited to submit a response to any one of the questions below. Submissions should
comply with the following:
• 6 A4 sides maximum including all figures, diagrams, tables and bibliography
• 12 point font minimum
• 2 cm margins minimum
• 1500-2500 words total (including footnotes and figure captions, but excluding
bibliography)
2021-22 Questions:
1. How realistic is it to develop a small molecule therapy for Covid-19? Could such a therapy
be rolled out in a timeframe that it could have an impact on the current pandemic?
2. Sleep deprivation in clinical health settings. Does it matter?
3. Looking to the future. Will stem cell therapies be outpaced by machine-brain interfaces for
the treatment of retinal disease?

Music

Newnham College Music Essay Prize
The Newnham Music Essay Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a maintained sector UK school. It is designed to give students the opportunity to think and write about music in its broadest context, while developing their independent study and writing skills.

2021-22 Questions:
1) How have improvements in transport and communications infrastructure affected the history of music – and in what ways might they do so in future?
2) Evaluate the challenges and opportunities presented to musical culture in a time of global pandemic.
3) In some ways music can be thought of as the ultimate interdisciplinary subject, but it is also highly specialised in other respects. Examine this paradox in the context of the debate about music’s role in primary and secondary education.

Sciences

Newnham College Engineering Essay Prize
The Newnham Engineering Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a UK state school. The prize may be of particular interest to those studying Physics, Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Design and Technology or Economics, but they welcome entries from interested students studying any combination of subjects.

2021-22 Questions:
1. What can engineers do to mitigate climate change?
- Atmospheric levels of CO2 are increasing and the world is waking up to the problem of climate change brought about by human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. As engineers, we have the skills and expertise to make a difference, providing technological solutions to reduce global carbon emissions. All engineering disciplines have a role to play and some areas are suggested below.

(a) Electric Power Generation and consumption. What are ‘renewable sources’ of electric power generation? How do they work and what are their strengths and limitations? Are there any new sources being researched and developed that might provide solutions for the future? Could the UK generate all its electricity from renewable sources?

- How can we reduce our demand for electric power so that we don’t need to generate so much?
- There may be opportunities in both domestic and commercial/industrial consumption, e.g. energy efficient homes, energy-efficient manufacturing, low power consumer electronics.

(b) Transport. Modern lifestyles involve a lot of transport, of people as well as goods. How energy-efficient are different modes of transport, and what is the potential for reducing their carbon footprint?

(c) Construction. This sector is one of the biggest emitters of carbon globally. The carbon emissions arise from many sources, especially the huge amount of concrete used in construction projects but also including the energy to power machines. Do we have any alternatives for materials or technology strategies to reduce these emissions?

(d) Other engineering areas. Technological solutions can be found in all engineering disciplines.
You are encouraged to choose for the topic of your essay an example that interests you.

2. Data and information engineering

Data and information engineering is being used everywhere around us. Our life increasingly relies on data analysis, from the recent developments in the automotive sector to social media, from machine assisted surgery to law forensics. The data deluge provided by recent technological advances has made automation in data analysis necessary to identify hidden patterns of information within the considered datasets. It is also true that a fully automated world could bring new risks and dangers that did not exist even just a few years ago (e.g., the ethical dilemmas of self driving cars). Write an essay on the major aspects of social awareness in AI development, and how this could impact:

a) The health sector.
b) Government, democracy and policing.
c) Sustainable development.
d) Another major topic of your interest.

You are encouraged to think about the engineering considerations related to some of these topics as well as the ethical considerations. What makes an algorithm particularly helpful or harmful?

Newnham College Biological Sciences Essay Prize
The Newnham College Biological Sciences Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a UK state school. The prize may be of particular interest to those studying Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Mathematics, but we welcome entries from interested students studying any combination of subjects.

Entrants are invited to submit a response to any one of the titles overleaf. Submissions should comply with the following:

- 5 A4 sides maximum including all figures, diagrams, tables and bibliography
- 12 point font minimum
- 2 cm margins minimum
- 2500 words max.

2021-22 Questions:
1. Is biology in a reproducibility crisis?
2. Assess the contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recent scientific advances.
3. Past and present: How has infection shaped the human genome?

Newnham College Computer Science Essay Prize
The Computer Science Essay Prize is open to all female students currently in Year 12 (Lower Sixth) at a maintained sector UK school. The prize may be of particular interest to those studying Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or Chemistry, but we welcome entries from interested students studying any combination of subjects.

Entrants are invited to submit a response to any one of the questions overleaf. Submissions should comply with the following:
- 4-6 A4 sides maximum including all figures, diagrams, tables and bibliography
- 12 point font minimum
- 2 cm margins minimum
- 2500 words maximum

2021-22 Questions:
1. Is there a fundamental difference between self-driving cars and a "slaughter army" of killer drones?
2. Mobile phone apps are generally written by commercial entities for private gain. If you had the same resources to design one mobile phone app that would make the world better, what would it be and how would it work?